the status is not quo

I just wanted to let it be known that after 2.5 years of marriage and much struggle, I finally convinced Aaron to watch Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. Spoiler alert: he loved it, probably because he's now a big fan of Neil Patrick Harris after watching six seasons of How I Met Your Mother on Netflix.

This is like my third blog post on this show, so if you haven't already seen it, watch. it. Now with Aaron's full endorsement!

in Just- spring

This is a post about all the spring-ish-food-related things I've been up to lately, because this is my life: I spend my time thinking about chemistry and mostly what I'm going to eat for my next meal. 

Aaron and I made ravioli a couple of weekends ago. We filled it with ricotta we made ourselves, which, ironically I now love (so easy, so cheap, so delicious), and served it with a lemon cream sauce and asparagus. I wanted to make something that screamed spring, and this seemed like a good option.

We also made lemon bars the other week, using the tart pan I got for Christmas. It took some serious math skills to make this happen, since we used Metropolitan Bakery's lemon bar recipe, which is written for a 17"x11" pan. Ta-da, math is very useful, kids!

More spring-related (okay, actually just garden-related) activities: I made pistachio pesto using the basil plant in my windowsill. It was really great. The basil plant is still alive, which is a significant triumph for me. Fourth time's the charm! However, some very suspicious brown marks are creeping up all of the stems, probably because my pot is small and has no drainage whatsoever? I have no idea what I'm doing. I also bought three sun gold tomato plants (like yellow cherry tomatoes) and four jalapeno pepper plants. The lower leaves of the sun golds are all turning yellow and falling off (????), but the jalapenos seem to be doing just fine. I'm thinking about planting some zucchini and maybe some strawberries. Anyone have any tips for any of these?

Or anyone have any suggestions for our next kitchen adventure? We have a sort of three day weekend coming up, and we need a project in case the cicadas come out of the ground and I have to lock myself indoors for six weeks because I am terrified of large, flying bugs.

astronauts deserve a lot of capitalized letters

I know I'm like 3 days late on this, but THIS VIDEO:

I'm obsessed, probably because in junior high I wanted to be an astronaut. And, after watching that video three times today I still kind of do. I mean, crying in space:

DOES IT GET ANY COOLER THAN THAT?

a short thought (as if any of my posts have been substantial lately)

I think if I were only cooking for myself, I'd practically become a vegetarian-not because I think it's wrong to eat animals or anything. I just really hate cooking chicken.

aaron is no longer on anyone's insurance but his own

It was Aaron's birthday last week. We made a pork wellington and chocolate cake with mint frosting to celebrate. Also, 20 balloons (and the birthday sign I made last year):

sorry, really blurry!

Do you like his black socks? He has to wear a shirt and tie every day when he's seeing patients, and then he doesn't change his socks when he comes home and changes into normal clothes.

sorry, weird cropping?

Aaron made it to 26 years old. More than a quarter of a century! I think that's a pretty good accomplishment. 

drop that new beat

A couple weekends ago, my friends Shane and Shannon came and stayed with us while competing at a ballroom competition here in Philly. I got to pretend I was still a ballroom dancer for two days, and it was glorious. Shannon had me try on all of her very glamorous costumes, and I got to go to the competition and watch them dance Saturday night. I loved every minute of it. It was a pretty small competition, but randomly Riccardo and Yulia (current world champions) happened to be competing at it. BEST SURPRISE EVER. Shane and Shannon also looked fantastic. I couldn't stop smiling while watching them dance, I was just so proud. I kept pointing them out to the grandma sitting next to me, those are my friends! I don't think I would have wanted to do something professionally with ballroom, but it was certainly fun to live that life vicariously for a couple days.

the butterflies fly away

After listening to "Party in the USA" three times to get myself pumped up Tuesday morning, I went and did my oral candidacy exam, and now I'm an official PhD candidate! Yay!

We celebrated by eating lasagna for the third night in a row and watching an episode of The West Wing. We know how to party.

i was just wondering

I have never been pregnant so I have no idea what I'm talking about, but sometimes I think pregnant people are making up pregnancy cravings. If you're craving pizza and ice cream, doesn't that just make you human? Maybe someone who has been pregnant can enlighten me.